Hunting the Lions
1879
Tom Brown has lion blood in his veins. Born to settlers at the Cape of Good Hope, raised on stories of the African wilderness, he dreams of the hunt from his earliest days. Sent to England for education, he endures grey classrooms and proper society while his heart remains in the bush. Then comes the letter from his father, an invitation to join a hunting expedition into the interior. Tom is done with books. He wants blood. R.M. Ballantyne, the Victorian master of wilderness adventure, delivers exactly what the title promises: lions, yes, but also the brutal beauty of untamed country, the strange cultures of the interior, and one young man's violent education in what it means to want something badly enough to kill for it. This is adventure fiction in its raw, unapologetic form - a boy becoming a man through the only curriculum the African veld recognizes. For readers who want their adventures with teeth, who remember when novels dared to be dangerous.
